Areva's Net Declines 38%
On Finnish Reactor Costs

By

Anne-Sylvaine Chassany

Updated March 23, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

PARIS -- French state-owned nuclear engineering company Areva SA Thursday reported a 38% drop in full-year net profit, weighed down by a charge related to the construction of a 1,600-megawatt nuclear-power reactor in Finland.

The world's leading nuclear-reactor maker, which recently made a &euro;1.14 billion ($1.53 billion) offer to buy German wind-power turbines supplier REpower AG, said net profit declined to &euro;649 million in 2006 from &euro;1.05 billion in 2005. Excluding the positive impact of the sale...